Problem with hard drive and booting up.

dave3

Hi all
I'm currently having a problem with my dell dimension 9100 desktop pc that i hope someone can help me with. The pc has 2 internal hard drives each of 160GB storage that are controlled by a RAID BIOS ( whatever that is. I don't know.)
On booting up the system the following happens. A screen is displayed showing the names of the 2 hard drives along with their serial numbers and size. The first hard disk also shows a status of Error Occurred (0) shown in a red font. The second disk has a status of member disk displayed in a green font. The pc is giving me 3 options. Press CTRL-I to enter the configuration utility. Or press F1 to continue or F2 to enter the setup utility.
Pressing F2 brings me into the BIOS and pressing CTRL-I bring up a menu that allows me to create or deleate a RAID volume or reset disks to non RAID.

If i press F1 i'm told the the computer did not start successfully and i get the option to start in safe mode or load windows normally. No matter which option i choose attempts to load windows XP but after around a minute I get a blue screen of death telling me the following.
Unmountable boot volume with the following error.
STOP: 0x000000ED (0x87184C30, 0xC0000185, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

I've opened up the case of the computer and confirmed that all the leads connecting the hard drives are firmly in place. I've also tried swapping the positions of the 2 hard drives so each hard drive is connected with the other leads but it makes no difference.
About 3 months ago I had to have the PSU on the pc replaced and the pc has worked fine since then. Aso I've tried reseting the pc to the factory settings by pressing CTRL F11 at start up but this failed to work. All my data on the 2 hard drives is backed up to an external hard drive so thats not a problem. Is there any way to restore the current hard drive or is the drive itself physically broken. I don't have any recovery disks for windows XP and can't figure out a way to make them.

Dave.

zenno

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2605/fixing_the_dreaded_unmountable_boot_volume_error/

Basically you need your windows xp installation disc. If you don't have it then you will have to find it or get a loan of it from a friend.

you will need to boot from this disc so make sure you have "boot from cd" set as the first boot device in the bios. Actually seeing that it's a dell, all you have to do is put the windows xp disc into the drive and restart the pc. the minute the pc is starting up keep pressing the F12 key until it shows you a black page with options and then use your arrow keys to highlight boot from cd and click enter and when it loads up you will need to go into repair computer and then follow the instructions on that link.....

XP Directions:

1. Insert your XP installation disc into an optical drive and boot up your computer.
2. When you see a welcome screen, hit the R key on your keyboard. This will enter you into recovery mode with a DOS prompt.
3. Now type chkdsk /p and hit Enter. This will launch a utility which will check for errors on your hard drive.
4. After the process is done, type fixboot and hit Enter to repair any damaged boot files which may have become corrupted. When asked to say yes or no, type the Y key on your keyboard.
5. Type exit and press the Enter key to reboot your computer.

I personally never tried the above method as i always go directly into boot mode but this is probably the same but just sounds a little different, anyway give it a shot and see how she goes.

tadhgor

Hi,

I think I have a similar issue with a Dell Inspiron 1720 and was just wondering if the same fix would work.

My old hard drive became corrupted and I was told it would need to be replaced. I bought a new one (Western Digital WD2500BEVS, SATA 1.5Gb/s, 250GB). Took out the old one and replaced it with the new one. It fit fully into place. I then turned on the laptop but after about 30sec of loading, it goes straight to static page that just gives information on the hard drive.

I have the installation disks, but nothing happens when I load the CD. Is this the same issue as the original post? If not, any suggestions?

Any help appreciated.
Tadhg.

zenno

tadhgor wrote: »

Hi,

I think I have a similar issue with a Dell Inspiron 1720 and was just wondering if the same fix would work.

My old hard drive became corrupted and I was told it would need to be replaced. I bought a new one (Western Digital WD2500BEVS, SATA 1.5Gb/s, 250GB). Took out the old one and replaced it with the new one. It fit fully into place. I then turned on the laptop but after about 30sec of loading, it goes straight to static page that just gives information on the hard drive.

I have the installation disks, but nothing happens when I load the CD. Is this the same issue as the original post? If not, any suggestions?

Any help appreciated.
Tadhg.

What operating system disc do you have/use ?. xp/vista or windows 7 ?

just put the windows disc into the drive and then restart the laptop. the second you see the bios screen keep pressing the F12 button continuously until you get an option screen and then use your arrow keys to scroll down to BOOT FROM CD, or it might say OPTICAL DRIVE. when you highlight this press the enter button and let it load files.

when it is loaded just look for "install windows" and click that and install on C drive and follow any instructions it say's. It will format the new drive and install windows.

After it installs windows run windows update and it should install any hardware drivers and other security update stuff but it will take a good while so just give it time.